roamfandomcom-20200213-history
Roam: Chapter 08
Chapter 8 Characters * [[1817 Pagnal's Cortisy Juctor|'Pagnal's Cortisy Juctor']] * Remuny * Degnal Qualens Voriel * [[975 Old Degnal Voriel-Otibryal, C.|'Old Degnal Voriel-Otibryal, C.']] Locations * Scruval's Mansion Contents Pagnal's Cortisy Juctor Cortisy shook her head as she strode into the atrium, the state of her son’s white tunic so ridiculous that her response veered away from anger into laughter. “Mistress!” spluttered Remuny, standing up from the sunlit table set up by the side of the rectangular pond, her eyes racing. “I’m so sorry!” “It’s fine,” Cortisy assured the nurse as she reached the table, squatting down to Degnal’s eye level, the pomegranate juice running down his beaming face, staining his clothes (and the marble floor) like the muzzle of a wolf with a fresh kill. “He insisted,” Remuny continued, flapping around in an attempt to staunch the flow. “You know how he can be – he insisted!” “Remuny,” Cortisy put a hand gently around the back of the girl’s neck, looking into her catlike eyes. Freckles across her nose and cheeks – and her servility – gave her the impression of being younger than Cortisy, though she was a couple of years older. Cortisy was glad that she had bought her. “Listen to me: it’s fine. It’s just a tunic.” “Yes, mistress,” Remuny nodded. “Sorry.” “Stop apologising,” Cortisy smiled, running a finger through the girl’s dark, straight hair, “or I’ll have you be the one to clean it.” “Yes, mistress,” she said, just stopping herself from apologising again. She found a smile. “Good girl,” Cortisy said, tapping a thumb playfully on Remuny’s cheek. “Now leave me with my son, if you would.” “Of course, mistress,” Remuny bowed her head. She began to walk away, glanced back as if wondering whether she ought to say something, then left, thinking better of it. Cortisy, revelling in her good mood, chuckled at the slave’s well-intentioned bumbling. “Pomegranate!” demanded Degnal. Cortisy turned around to face her son, sat in a high chair at the metalwork table, his skinny little legs dangling. “Pomegranate!” Cortisy looked around showily. “I’m sorry, Degnal, do you see any slaves here?” “Pomegranate!” he repeated with added strain, banging a hand on the table, shaking the dishes. Cortisy reached out and grabbed his wrist. He blinked up at her, deciding whether to fall into a tantrum. Cortisy found a balance between stern and soft in her eyes and her tone. “I’m not a slave, Degnal, and you are not the king,” she said clearly. She wondered if raising all children was this difficult, or just the sons of Consuls. “What do you call me?” “Ma,” he said, his big, round eyes fixed on hers, his wrist still hostage. “Right,” she smiled. “And what is it that you want?” “Pomegranate,” he said. “So what do you say?” “Ma, can I have pomegranate?” he tried. “''May'' I have,” she corrected him. “Please.” “Ma, may I have pomegranate, please?” “You may,” she said, softly releasing his arm. “Or, better yet, you can feed yourself. You’re a big boy now.” “I’m four!” he said with unabashed glee, melting her heart. She ran her hands through his beautiful blond hair, wondering quite where it had come from. It resembled his half-father’s more than his father’s, though that was quite biologically impossible, and none of her family hinted at these sunshine wisps. “Yes, you are,” she said proudly, burying her face in his crown, inhaling another fix of that unique, heady smell. “You’re my beautiful, beautiful, four-year-old boy,” she mumbled into his hair. Degnal wriggled free of her embrace, reaching out for another handful of the quite devastated pomegranate on the table. She sat up, watching him obliviously squirt ruby juice everywhere again as she tamped down on the unreasonable hurt that his movements had brought her. He couldn’t look happier, and it felt like a knife in her heart. “Are you not eating, Ma?” he asked, his chin dripping. She blinked out of her mindset, casting her eyes on the other plates set out on the table for the first time. She picked up a hunk of bread, holding it up for him with a triumphant look as an answer, dipping it in some thick, clear honey. “Mothers don’t need to eat nearly as much as growing boys,” she told him, leaning forward to take a big bite without trailing honey over her light morning shift. The laundry slaves didn’t deserve any more work than they had already – though her husband Scruval would no doubt advocate just throwing the stained tunic away and acquiring a new one. Their son was growing so quickly that it would probably be necessary soon anyway, but her mother hadn’t raised her to be wasteful. Well, her mother and her coterie of nurse slaves. “Why?” he asked. When he chewed, his big cheeks looked like Scruval’s. She didn’t like that at all. She resisted the urge to tell him not to talk with a mouthful, though. He had already learned a lesson this morning. “Because if I ate as much as you do,” she smiled, filling her cheeks with bread, “then I would grow as big and fat as Roam-Beast.” She held her arms out, mirroring the wobbling gait of a fat person. “Then people would come and live on me, which I imagine would be dreadfully uncomfortable, and then people would fight wars over me, and Roam-Beast would fight me, thinking I wanted to eat its World-Wells. And it would put its beak into my big, fat tummy, and I would pop. Pop!” She threw her arms out, masking the swallowing of her cheek bread, then slumped down in her chair as if dead. “Ma, no!” Degnal cried out, awkwardly plopping down off his chair and throwing his arms around her, pressing his juice-covered face into her bosom. Cortisy laughed to herself, wondering why she had even tried to stay clean around the boy. “I don’t want you to die!” “Well, then,” she said, sitting up and pulling her son into her lap, squeezing him tight. He was still so small, but somehow so big. “You’d better hope that I never get as hungry as you do, my little leech.” She remembered when the midwives had first placed him, squalling and waxy, into her arms in the Red Room, and despite all the blood and exhaustion, the room had been thick with love and the fog of sudden clarity. “Like Pa?” he asked, plucking his head out to ask up to her. “Degnal,” she said, suppressing a snort of laughter, “that’s not nice. Or fair.” “Why?” he asked, his nose crinkling in confusion. “Pa is bigger than you, and bigger than Remny.” “He is a man,” Cortisy said. “He’s bigger than Sa,” Degnal insisted, referring to his half-father and namesake. “Much bigger, and eats and drinks much more.” “It’s not polite to say so,” she replied, a little disconcerted at the boy’s stubborn and logical tone. “Why?” “He is your father,” she said, much as it pained her. “You are a Roaman, Degnal, and one of the Ten Duties of a Roaman citizen is to honour their family. You owe your father Scruval your respect, which means that you have to be polite.” “Even if he is fat?” Degnal frowned. “Especially if he is fat,” she said. “It’s when people aren’t perfect that it is harder to be polite, but you have to try harder, because impolite people hurt people’s feelings.” “So?” “Do you like it when people are mean to you?” she asked. He thought for a second; perhaps nobody ever was. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.” “So why would you do that to other people?” she asked. “But that’s lying!” he said, overcome by a wave of anger from nowhere. “Well, no,” she hesitated. “It is!” he hit her arm, which exhibited more strength and less control that she was comfortable with. She hugged him tighter, restricting his limbs. He struggled for a second before relenting to her insistent hushing. “Hush now, Degnal,” she said into the top of his head. “No, we don’t hit. Big boys use their words. You’re a big boy, aren’t you?” “I am a big boy,” he pouted when she half let him away from her body. “I know,” she resisted the urge to kiss his forehead, worried that he might hurt her again by shying away or wiping it off in a strop. “And what do big boys do?” “Tell the truth,” he said, glaring up at her. “That’s what Sa said!” “Did he?” she said wearily. For a second, she had worried that he was referring to a lesson of hers that she had forgotten but young Degnal had remembered, but it seemed that Old Degnal had been imparting some of his own lessons on the boy. Which, she accepted, was preferable to the boy learning his morals from Scruval, but it certainly made her life more difficult sometimes. “Yes,” Degnal nodded with unshakeable surety. “He said that the truth is the best answer, and that life would be better for all the people if everyone always told the truth. Always!” “Well, that might be true,” Cortisy said, “but life is also better when people are polite.” “That’s –” Degnal stopped himself, thinking very hard. The juice on his chin which wasn’t on her shirt had dried into a bizarre pink shadow. “When do you tell the truth, and when do you be polite?” Cortisy smiled at her brilliant son. “That question is called ‘politics’,” she said, “and if you can work out the answer, you’ll make me a Mother of Roam before I’m sixty.” Degnal had turned to look at something over her shoulder, across the atrium, giving no indication that he had listened at all to the answer to his question. “Sa!” he called out to Old Degnal, who had emerged from the depths of the mansion and was walking along the colonnade that skirted the obsessively ordered garden around the rain pond. “Ma says that you shouldn’t tell the truth!” Her elder husband gave her a quizzical but good-natured look, but seemed happy to leave the two of them alone on his way to the front door. She couldn’t let him go out looking like he did, though. He had clearly dressed without the aid of his slaves again, and still hadn’t mastered the Senatorial toga, which hung off his shoulder lumpily. “Degnal,” she called out, gently putting her son back on his seat and crossing the garden to intercept her husband. He seemed embarrassed by her attention, as if he had intended to slip out of their home – Scruval’s home, really – unseen, as he often did. “Cortisy,” he said respectfully, putting his hands around her gently. “You look beautiful this morning, my darling wife. The sunlight suits you.” “The pomegranate less so,” she smiled. “But I’m not going out in public, am I? He shook his head, as if unsure whether he was supposed to answer. “What will people think of me if they see Old Degnal Voriel-Otibryal attending a session of the Senate looking like this?” she asked, patting down his wispy white hair. “That Old Degnal’s wife doesn’t look after her husband, they’ll say. She only thinks about herself.” Old Degnal shook his head. “I suppose I could make more of an effort. It all just seems very superficial. I don’t mean to reflect badly on you, darling.” “It’s politics,” she said. “It’s all superficial, dear sweet Degnal.” “I know,” he sighed. “It was a lot simpler at sea, I suppose,” she said, tugging at the folds of his toga, trying to figure out quite what he had done so wrong. He looked up, his eyes twinkling. “Yes, quite,” he said. “How did you…?” “We’ve been married eight years,” she smiled, as earnestly as she could. “Even split between two husbands, I think that’s quite enough time to have heard all of your stories – especially your grumbles.” “You’re quite right,” he said. “I’m sorry.” “Come on, now,” she tutted, “not at sorry as this toga. Did you put it on while wrestling with the Azamadra?” she asked, referring to the mythical half-bear half-snake that had bested the eleven princes of Azamara before being defeated by the hero Altiron. He smiled down at her. She never knew whether to look at his birthmark or not – it followed the arc around his white eye, dark and blotchy like a wine stain, or pomegranate, it transpired. Before she had married him, the daughters of her father’s friends had laughed at him, calling him Blotchy Degnal and the like, but she hadn’t heard him called that since her betrothal, though she was under no illusion that it was because people no longer said it. Old Degnal Voriel-Otibryal “You’ve been teaching Degnal to lie?” Old Degnal asked, looking over her shoulder to where the boy was merrily mashing the final few fragments of a pomegranate onto the table, enjoying being as loud as possible. “He’s relentless,” she said, shaking her head in half-honest desperation. “And stubborn. Is that from you?” “I have my moments,” he said. “As do my boys.” He had had four sons, and three half-sons other than Degnal, and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren by them and his daughter and two half-daughters. “I didn’t often see my children around this age, because of the war, but each time I saw them they amazed me in a different way, especially the first time. At first, you’re amazed that they can speak. Then, you’re amazed that they can think. Then, you’re horrified that they can say what they think, and you realise that they’re never going to stop.” Apart from those that he outlived, of course, like his beautiful son Young Degnal, who had died the previous year, aged one-and-thirty, in a foolish chariot-racing accident at the funeral games of Chinless Latavyal Juctor Candoam, leaving behind seven children. Or his second daughter, Cortisy, who had died in the Red Room before he had ever seen her. But Cortisy didn’t need to hear any of that, of course. She knew, and if the thought crossed her mind then she was too thoughtful to let it show. Even if it had all the use of a cock crowing, Degnal would never stop griping about togas. They had been adopted by the Roamans as national dress after the founder of the city, Semural, had worn a worker’s simple white sheet to show his humility to the Scalifian peoples who had suffered under the wicked and decadent King Resteral. Over the centuries, they had become more and more convoluted (and heavy), with garish colour-coded hems to boast of rank and prestige that quite contradicted the original intent, and ostentatiously restrictive, always requiring one hand to hold closed, to advertise the power of the wearer to have others ace as his hands. Degnal’s toga was rimmed in blue for his Voriel ancestry, and gold to indicate that he had once been elected as Consul, the highest political rank in the Roaman Republic. There were some, such as Young Sural Pavinny Ops, who disavowed their rightful stripes and wore only plain, rough togas to reinforce their connection to the common man, thought that was just as much of an affectation. Things had been simpler, and honestly so, at sea, where the men had worn practical tunics, cinched with a belt, to allow them to sweat as they tugged on ropes and oars, and swim rather than sink if they fell overboard. That was just the truth. Degnal understood that there were responsibilities as a Roaman which extended beyond the Ten Duties that the Lawmakers had laid down, along with the Ten Rights, in the first years of the Republic. He had been born into a minor branch of the Voriel family, his father and grandfather both the third and youngest sons, and he had understood that to make his way in the world that he would have to serve. When his father, Proud Renyal, had left to become Captain of the Gaegnian Well on the frontline of the war against Inachiron, Degnal and his older brother Young Renyal, lacking a half-father, had been placed into the care of the Conduit of Voriel in the Palace of Voriel. Just ten years old, without designs but naturally humble (in no small part due to the bullying of his more prestigious peers in the palace, Young Semural Voriel Juctor and Lazy Semural Voriel-Cuinsal Juctor), Degnal had devoted himself to the old Conduit, Otibryal Voriel-Cuinsal Adesican, aiding him in his religious and civic duties (though not the business of his slaving concern), helping him around his quarters, and ever serving food and wine alongside the slaves at his banquets. The Consul Wrinkled Sepredal Candoam Sarevir had once been much amused by the adolescent Familial pouring his drink at a dinner in his honour, declaring with wine-sweet breath that the Republic needed “fewer diners and more Degnals”. The words rattled around his mind fifty years later, though every diner at that dinner was long dead. “How long has it actually been?” his wife asked, tugging his toga hard around his shoulder, jolting him out of his reverie. She recognised the bewilderment in his face, and he hoped she didn’t think that it was due to his age. “Since you captained a ship?” “By Voriel,” he blew out a long breath as he though back. “I thought you knew all of my stories?” She had never taken an interest in such things before. “Can’t you remember?” she smiled cruelly. She really was beautiful, with her eyes and her cheekbones. He felt guilty for having robbed the world of her at such a young age – hopefully she had the good sense to have a true love her own age that she kept from her old husbands. “I thought I had married a naval war hero, but maybe that was all just electoral campaign bluster?” “Hush now, dear,” he said, smiling back so that she might not interpret his tone. He had never really been good at joking, though he liked to think that he had a sense of humour. “I suppose it was twelve years ago, as Marshal alongside Proud Machyal. How old would you have been then?” “Ten,” she smiled, doing her best to hide any sadness. “I remember hearing the bells ringing with news of the battle. My father talked about how prices in the fora were tumbling.” “I was nearing fifty. It was hardly a battle, in truth,” Degnal said, remembering the sea bristling with snapped masts and oars. “Pirates prey on the weak, and run from the strong. Once they realised that we had encircled them at the Muan Tears, off the north-west of Rake, they turned on each other like crabs in a barrel, each blocking and dragging the other in their panic. The seas there are vicious; rocks like teeth.” “It’s where Mu sank,” Cortisy nodded. “During the Aledran War.” “That is what they told me,” Degnal said, “though it seems ever so shallow for a World-Beast to have anywhere to sink to. It is quite possible I misunderstand. Anyway, if you ever wished to see an example of the advantage of Roaman discipline, that was it. For the longest time, we held our position while their ships broke, dashing themselves on the rocks for the sharks or suicidally trying to break through our lines one by one. The smartest just surrendered.” “And were rehomed in Crylalt,” she said. “Indeed,” Degnal said. “Proud Machyal believes in mercy and second chances, recognising that many of those poor men were victims of economic hardships following the wars.” “And his father’s tyranny,” she said with a bit of a barb. He had never pried into her political views, largely because he found such things uninteresting. “No doubt,” Degnal nodded. “There were many who called us traitors for not executing every single one of those we captured. Easy words to shout from the Senate steps; some of the lads were younger than you were.” “Is that why you were denied a Triumph?” “I never wanted a Triumph,” he replied, perhaps a little too quickly. He really hadn’t, though. Others had advocated it in their names. He had ridden in honour at the side of two Triumphant heroes, Lecarol Voriel-Cuinsal Juctor after Gelebram Point and Ambyal Voriel Candoam after the Sycadine Stacks, and had never felt more self-conscious and pompous. Peace on the seas had been reward enough. “No, they used to mean something, in real wars. People used to protect Roam out of duty, not for baubles and fame.” “A long time ago, perhaps,” Cortisy smiled up at him. His toga had been corrected long ago, but she seemed in no rush to get back to her son. “In my lifetime,” he insisted. “As I said…,” she grinned. He couldn’t help but smile back, despite her insult. For a second, they enjoyed each other’s company. “What was she like?” Cortisy asked, her eyes now wide, flickering between his. “Who?” he asked, off-balance. “Your first wife. Did you love her?” Old Degnal felt his heart quicken, like the oars picking up to ramming speed. He had no idea why she had asked that, and knew that it was chiselled all over his face. His first wife, Constrincas Varcy, a Straequian, had joined him to Young Vatial Seltalt Scobry, a Fuscrite, both of them the offspring of first-generation citizens invited to Roam after the Second Fuscrite War and married through Companion wives. For more than thirty years, she had been his anchor and his harbour, sharing his admiration for service, never for a second dissuading him from leaving for war, and always welcoming him with gratitude and love – both romantic and that deeper kind shared by those who understand the secret rewards of raising children in their own image. The five years during the Tyranny that Degnal had spent as Captain of the Prerentian Well here in Nelunty had been the best of his life – a fact that he sometimes felt ashamed of, as he had allowed to service to the Republic to wane in favour of indulging his service to his family, whom he had neglected during the previous eighteen years of war. His love for his wife had still burned strong, and she had born him a final son at one-and-forty, named Renyal for Degnal’s late father, who had died for pride during the Provincial War. He had – once his duties as Captain were seen to, of course – spent days riding with his teenage sons and half-sons, or going out on sailing boats on Prerenty Bay to teach them how to harness the winds. The three spouses – Old Degnal, Young Vatial, and Constrincas – had groomed their children into respectable citizens and married them into good families. Yes, they had been good times. Her death, while he had been Consul for that wretched year, had nearly destroyed him. He would never know what wrongs she had done the gods, or he, or Young Vatial, or which enemy they had made who might have cursed his darling wife to the long, painful death she suffered, robbing her of her beauty and her dignity before her mind and finally her breath. He would never forgive those who had insisted he should have disrespected her by cutting short his mandated – and still all-too-short – period of grief seclusion, nor those who accused him of neglecting his duties to the Republic, especially when those same voices had advocated stifling him and his agenda for the entirety of his term. He would never forget the pain in Young Vatial’s eyes when he had told him that he would be marrying Scruval Qualens through Cortisy rather than remarrying to continue their alliance of three prosperous decades. “You don’t want to know the answer to that question, my dearest,” he said, feeling his eyes redden. “You are my wife, and I love you very much.” He did. Cortisy (and her son, squabbling over her shoulder with his slave nurse Remuny) had provided Degnal with much appreciated companionship throughout their marriage. She was a good deal more intelligent than he was, able to disentangle his worries with a few incisive questions, but she had never trusted him fully, treating his problems as thought puzzles rather than sharing them with him. He wondered whether things might have been different between them had he ever been able to consummate their union, but his fires had burned out long ago, despite her youth and beauty. Without physical intimacy, their relationship had become like stale bread, closer to the bond between a father and his daughter, or rather a half-father and half-daughter. She patted his chest, his toga, with a sense of finality, but her eyes still roved like she had something to say. Something important. “Come on, you’ll be late,” she said, the moment past. Degnal nodded, walking with her arm in his towards the short entrance hall. The door slave, his hair dyed in ridiculous Issycrian curls to Scruval’s specification, glanced between them, eager to fulfil his role in life. “Cortisy,” he said, his heart brimming with misgivings. Something was troubling her, and she didn’t feel that she could trust him. He didn’t blame her, of course, as she looked up at him with eyes caught between suspicions. The guilt was both of theirs. He couldn’t perform his physical duties as a husband, and furthermore kept secrets from her – secrets which could harm her greatly if they were to be exposed and catch her unawares. He had wasted more than a third of her life in a husk of a marriage; she had every reason to resent him. “I –,” he hesitated. “I’ve never been good at this.” “At what?” “What hope do I stand in the Senate when I can’t even manage diplomacy with my own wife?” he chuckled, shaking his head. She tilted her head at him. “I’ve never been a politician.” “I’m sure it was simpler at sea,” she said, patting his hand between hers, covering slightly for her understandable bemusement. Perhaps he was as senile as he must have appeared to her. “It was,” Degnal nodded, finding a current there. “The sea can be a lonely place, and a cruel one, as can Roam, for all its people. What I’m trying to say is that I hope that you have friends – of rather that I hope that we can be friends.” He winced at the clumsiness of his words. “Degnal, my dear,” she smiled. “We’ve been married eight years.” “So you’ve said, but I never hear your troubles,” Degnal realised as he said it. “I want to know what is on your mind, Cortisy. For you to trust me as I trust you, so that neither of us hesitate before speaking, as you did just now.” As it was with Constrincas. She studied him, no doubt wondering where his words had come from. “I wish for that too,” she said deliberately. “So?” She glanced at the door slave, who was pretending not to be listening. “Maybe later, my dear.” Degnal nodded, a little deflated. Their lonely masquerade of a marriage would continue, then. He gathered his toga up for the walk to the Senate House, prepared for the dirty streets. “You are a good-hearted man, Degnal, which means something in the long run,” she said as he turned away. “Your sailors knew that, as did those who elected you Consul, and I do too.” “I thank you for your optimistic words, Cortisy, but I worry that you’ve been locked away in this mansion for too long.” He watched every flicker of her face. “The so-called good men like me are now quite useless on Roam, unable to lower ourselves to the level where we might oppose those in it for the short game and the influence of their interests.” Did she understand? She stepped closer to him. “The Issycrian poet Leuthon was saying the same of the Kings of the Aledran War a millennium ago – corrupt, self-interested and duplicitous – but there were good men then, and good men since, and good men now.” “Those Kings and their heroes failed to win the war,” Degnal reminded her sadly, “after two decades of fruitless death and vengeances, plunging the whole world into centuries of darkness.” “I see that my optimism is catching!” she chuckled. “And who did they meet at the gates of the Underworld but Degnal, who alone was fair enough to judge the weight of their souls,” she said, tipping up onto her toes to place a tender kiss on his cheek. He genuinely couldn’t tell if they had been having the same conversation. “Run along, dearest Degnal, the Senate awaits. As dark as things seem, as much as you might detest politics, I assure you that this one session is unlikely to usher in an age of barbarism.” Category:Chapter Category:Cortisy POV Chapter Category:Degnal POV Chapter